The smaller scaling of features in integrated circuits (ICs) has been a driving force behind an ever-growing semiconductor industry. The scaling to smaller and smaller features enables increased densities of functional units on the limited real estate of semiconductor IC chips. IC chips are used in a variety of devices including computers, mobile phones, and consumer electronics. A plurality of IC chips can typically be formed on a single silicon wafer, i.e. a silicon disk having a diameter of, for example, 300 millimeters (mm), which is then diced apart to create individual chips or dies. IC chips can include feature sizes on the nanometer scale and can comprise hundreds of millions of components.
As integrated circuit features are scaled down and density increases, reliability of integrated circuits may be affected by a number of stresses that increase as feature size drops and density increases. These stresses include electrical, thermal, environmental, and mechanical stresses. Materials may be modified to address these stresses. For example, dielectric materials with low co-efficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and low dielectric loss may improve IC performance and reliability. However, as materials are modified, material performance may be affected in other aspects, such as when modified to improve thermal or electrical properties while worsening mechanical properties. In particular, there is a need for fabricating structures with dielectric materials having good dielectric properties (such as e.g. low electrical leakage, suitable value of a dielectric constant, and thermal stability) while maintaining adequate adhesion to conductive material layers.